Fear has hijacked bipartisan decision-making about Iraq.
The recent elections and shift in political power will not solve the tough issues in our Middle Eastern quagmire.
Effective solutions in the area require a new decision-making approach.
The problems with current U.
S.
decisions about Iraq are predictable from the process followed to reach them.
We see the classic fear-driven responses-fight ("Stay the course.
") or flight ("Pull out now.
") Decision-making case studies and scans of brain activity show that fearful events activate the primal or limbic portion of our brain but bypass our most creative frontal lobes and cerebral cortex.
While this pre-programmed response enables us to deal with an immediate crisis, it does not help us deal with the complexities of an ongoing situation like Iraq.
Here are the beginning steps that deeply divided legislative bodies, government agencies, corporations, and communities have taken to solve their toughest issues.
We can use this process to turnaround our problems in the Middle East.
First, enlist everyone who has a stake or opportunity to influence the outcome in Iraq.
Iraq has six countries surrounding it.
It is but a piece in a larger puzzle.
The U.
S.
"go it alone" approach has left us isolated.
No one likes a solution imposed upon him or her.
Much of the bitterness and hostility toward the U.
S.
throughout the Middle East links back to the implicit paternalism of U.
S.
policy, regardless of its good intentions.
Before trying to create any new solutions or even new recommendations, we need to enlist the regional players.
They are integral to developing a pathway forward and must share real ownership of it.
Second, discover hopes that stakeholders can pursue together.
Since fear got us into our problems in Iraq, we need a different way of thinking to get out of the quagmire.
Studies show that a hopeful perspective stimulates our best thinking to comprehend and resolve complex issues.
When we ask people what their hopes are and why they are important to them, we tap a wellspring of energy and opportunity.
Unfortunately, preset conceptions of what would be good for Iraq and how it should happen have hobbled U.
S.
policy.
Perhaps, we have feared the candid responses that we might hear if we asked people about their hopes.
However, in my experience even the most divided groups that have battled in the courts and in public for years can find shared hopes.
When participants realize that despite their deep differences they share common objectives, their attitudes shift and they begin to develop win-win solutions to fulfill them.
We have a great opportunity to engage the Iraqi people, their regional neighbors, and the global community to discover our hopes together.
Let's reclaim our positive leadership as agents of those hopes.
We need that foundation in order for progress to occur.
Third, uncover the real issues.
Whenever a problem festers, it is a sign that some other issue needs attention to achieve a breakthrough.
U.
S.
military intervention has been a solution in search of an issue.
The rationale for action has flipped from weapons of mass destruction to eliminating a network of terrorism to spreading democracy.
Getting to the real issues in the Middle East and solutions that address them remains an uncompleted task.
We can find these issues in careful listening with the leaders and people in the region.
In order to put these steps into practice, we must change from the gladiator dynamics of debates that push people into adversarial positions and drive them into fearful thinking.
Each of our politicians, policy makers, and participants in the dialogue needs to move beyond being either an apologist for the past or an advocate for a personal position.
Instead, everyone needs to speak to both the potential negatives and positives of the status quo and new alternatives.
How will various options support the hopes we share with the people of the Middle East?How can we use our best thinking to invent even better solutions? Iraq is a process problem rather than a people or political problem.
Once we grasp the potential and follow productive steps to work together, we will gain successful results.